Month: October 2015

“Russell Brand…he’s like a phoenix from the ashes,” director Ondi Timoner on making “Brand: A Second Coming”

The mercurial Russell Brand is the subject of Dig! director Ondi Timoner’s new documentary He used to be just a naughty boy, but now he might actually be the messiah. Or, maybe, he is a bit of both. Viewers can make up their own minds about comedian-turned-political revolutionary Russell Brand after catching director Ondi Timoner’s […]

Film Review: Make More Noise! Suffragettes in Silent Film

UK 1899 – 1917, 75 mins, Cert PG A BFI Release Opening on 23 October 2015 at BFI Southbank, Filmhouse Edinburgh and selected cinemas nationwide RATING: ★★★★★ An excellent counterpart to Sarah Gavin’s Suffragette – the dramatisation of the early 20th century women’s movement playing in cinemas now – Make More Noise! Suffragettes in Film […]

Film Review: The Assassin

Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien 12A  |  105 min  |  Drama  |  22 January 2016 (UK) Playing London Film Festival 2015 RATING: ★★★☆☆ The master of stillness and doyen of quiet realist narratives, Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, turns his attention to the wuxia (martial arts) genre in The Assassin, combing all the ravishing costumes and elegant sets […]

Deeds not words! Carey Mulligan, Meryl Streep and Sarah Gavron on Suffragette

It has been a while since this writer can remember attending a film press conference where all of the panel guests were women. But with women’s movement drama Suffragette, which opened this year’s London Film Festival, women were not just foregrounded in the casting, but were built into the DNA of the production from the […]

Film Review: Tangerine

Director Sean Baker USA 2015, 88 mins.  13 November 2015 (UK) Playing London Film Festival 2015 RATING: ★★★★★ Donuts feature heavily in Sean Baker’s Tangerine, and watching this film is the equivalent of eating about 500 of them in one sitting. This film is a shot of dayglo-coloured adrenaline to the vein, a vat of […]

Film Review: The Club

Director: Pablo Larraín 98 min  |  Drama  |  25 March 2016 (UK) Playing London Film Festival 2015 RATING: ★★★★★ Pablo Larrain’s The Club is a biting, searing indictment of the Catholic Church and all of its hypocrisy. Yet the director, as with his previous films which have explored in various ways the Chilean experience over […]

Film Review: Trumbo

Directed by Jay Roach USA 2015, 124 mins. UK Release 5 February 2016. Playing London Film Festival 2015 RATING: ★★★☆☆ The Hollywood blacklist, the paranoia-driven anti-Communist purges that saw thousands of Hollywood personnel put out of work and publicly shamed during the Cold War, seems like dark subject matter for any drama that seeks to […]

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